 | The Works of Thomas Love Peacock |  |
THE SPIRIT OF FIRE
Καθιππασασθε, κακ χερων ειλεσθε μου.
Πνεω τοι μενος, απαντα τε κοτον.
Αισχυλος.
ADVERTISEMENT
The worship of fire was universal in the first ages. When lost or corrupted in other nations, it was still preserved in its purity among the disciples of Zoroaster. Under the successors of Mohammed, the religion of the Magi fell before that of the Moslems: though a small and obscure remnant of the former sect still subsists in the East. In this ode, I attribute to Mohammed in person the subversion of the Magian fanes. The prophet of Arabia, propagating his new religion by the force of arms, is represented, as having entered the principal temple of the divinity of fire, and, after overturning the exterior altars, attempting to penetrate the sanctuary of the mystic flame.
STROPHE I.
Beneath the warrior's iron treadThe violated altars lie,
Where dateless years the rites have led
Of fire's primeval deity.
O'er trampled priests Mohammed flies,
Where the interior portals rise
The exterior temple is here a work of art, and the interior a natural cave.
Men repaired in the first ages either to the lonely summits of mountains, or else to caverns in the rocks, and hollows in the bosom of the earth, which they fancied were the residence of their gods. At the entrance of these, they raised their altars, and performed their vows. . . . When, in process of time, they began to erect temples, they were still determined in their situation by the vicinity of these objects, which they comprehended within the limits of the sacred enclosure. . . . Amongst the Persians, most of the temples were caverns in rocks, either formed by nature, or artificially produced.
Bryant's Ancient Mythology.From gaze profane and uninitiate feet
To guard the symbol-flame's retreat,
That, changeless there from unremembered days,
Pours through the hallowed cave its lonely rays.
He strikes the marble doors:
The temple's rocky floors
Resound, as from the opening cavern streams
A blaze of vivid white,
Pure as the pallid light
O'er hills of snow when wintry morning beams.
With instantaneous change, the splendor dread
Expanding glows intensely red,
A similar change, from a similar cause, occurs in the Paradiso of Dante, C. xxvii.
Dinanzi agli occhi miei le quattro faceStavano accese, e quella che pria venne
Incominciò a farsi più vivace;
E tal nella sembianza sua divenne,
Qual diverrebbe Giove, s'egli e Marte
Fossero augelli e cambiassersi penne.
[OMITTED] Di quel color, che per lo sole avverso
Nube dipinge da sera e da mane,
Vid' io allora tutto il ciel cosperso.
As when the autumnal day's descending star
Shrouds in the infant storm its crimson-beaming car.
ANTISTROPHE I.
As back the jarring portals swung,As forth that flame repellent broke,
A voice, from mid the radiance flung,
In thrilling accents sternly spoke:
And darest thou deem, thy arms accursed,
Thy laws in strife and carnage nursed,
Can long in dust my sacred altars whelm?
The breast-plate and the crested helm
My breath could pierce, and through thy every vein
Pour burning death and agonising pain:—
Awhile the fates severe
Decree thy triumph here:
Enjoy thy hour, and stamp in blood thy laws.
I sink to caves of night:
To burst with tenfold might,
Consume thy race, and vindicate my cause,
And re-assume alone the rites divine,
That in the infant world were mine,
When, wheresoever man, the wanderer, turned,
Beneath unnumbered names my votive altars burned.
As Phas, Phthas, Hephaistos, Vulcanus, Hestia, Vesta, Seva, Agni, Pavaca, &c.
Fire, and likewise the god of fire, was by the Amonians styled Apthas, and Aptha; contracted, and by different authors expressed, Apha, Pthas, and Ptha. He is by Suidas supposed to have been the Vulcan of Memphis: Φθας, ο Ηφαιστος παρα Μεμφιταις. And Cicero makes him the same deity of the Romans: Secundus (Vulcanus) Nilo natus, Phas, ut Ægyptii appellant, quem custodem esse Ægypti volunt. The author of the Clementines describes him much to the same purpose: Αιγυπτιοι δε ομοιωσ----το πυρ ιδια διαλεκτω Φθα εκαλεσαν, ο ερμηνευεται Ηφαιιστος . . . Ast, Asta, Esta, signified fire, and also the deity of that element. The Greeks expressed it Εστια and the Romans Vesta. . . . Procopius, speaking of the sacred fire of the Persians, says expressly, that it was the very same which in aftertimes the Romans worshipped, and called the fire of Hestia, or Vesta: Τουτο εστι το πυρ, οπερ Εστιαν εκαλουντο, και εσεβοντο εν τοις υστεροις χρονοις Ρωμαιοι. This is farther proved from a well known verse in Ovid:
Bryant's Ancient Mythology.
The worship of solar or vestal fire may be ascribed, like that of Osiris and Isis, to an enthusiastic admiration of nature's wonderful powers; and it seems, as far as I can yet understand the Vedas, to be the principal worship recommended in them. We have seen, that Mahadeva himself is personified by fire; but subordinate to him is the god Agni, often called Pavaca, or the purifier, who answers to the Vulcan of Egypt. Sir William Jones.
EPODE I.
O'er this ball, in night revolving,Frost, and central silence, dwelt;
Till, the mighty mass dissolving,
My creative power was felt:
Pouring through heaven the streams of day,
Dispelled young nature's immemorial sleep,
Bade the woods wave, the lucid torrents play,
And burst the icy fetters of the deep.
In nascent beauty robed, the grateful earth
Hailed my primordial power with loud acclaim,
That gave her countless tribes of being birth,
And strung with motion man's commanding frame,
And kindled in his mind my own empyreal flame.
Seminibus.
Virgilius.
Zenoni νους κοσμου πυρινος, et Posidonio πνευμα νοερον και πυρωδες, cujus scintillæ et αποσπασματα ac σπερμαρα sunt animæ. Heyne.
Fire, light, and air, were long the symbols of the mental principle among oriental nations; and the tenuity of those fine essences continued for ages to be thought nearly similar to that of the soul. Drummond's Academical Questions.
Si l'on vouloit démonter la machine humaine, et analyser ce fluide nerveux, qui, suivant les oracles de la médecine, avertit le cerveau de toutes nos sensations, et devient aussi le mobile de nos facultés intellectuelles, il seroit aisé de prouver, que la matière mobile qui le compose est fortement impregnée de ce feu élémentaire. Telle seroit peut-être l'origine de ces expressions, ame ardente, imagination embrasée, flamme de génie, qu'on trouve dans toutes les langues primitives, et qui ne sont des métaphores que pour l'homme du peuple, qui n'est pas initié dans les mystères de la nature. Philosophie de la Nature.
STROPHE II.
From me all being springs: on meDestruction waits, and death, and fear.
With silent awe pale mortals see
My wandering comet's wild career,
That shakes sublime in meteor-light
Its flaming tresses on the night,
Announcing ruin to the world below.
Her spirit kindling at the glow,
The tearful muse with voice prophetic sings
The swift mutations of terrestrial things;
Sees discord's frantic brand
O'er some devoted land
Lead revolution's fratricidal train;
Hears from the ravaged vale
Tumultuous clamors sail,
While exiled kings in desert-pools assuage
Unwonted thirst's avenging rage;
Or, driven the peasant's wretched hut to share,
Force from a churlish soil the scanty meal of care.
ANTISTROPHE II.
The midnight seaman marks afarThe terrors of my mountain-throne,
Where, rousing earth's intestine war,
I sit, mid nature's wrecks, alone.
A fiery column rears on high
My darkly-volumed canopy,
Whose waving folds, deep-tinged with lurid light,
Gleam like the funeral robe of night.
Old ocean shrinks, and earth convulsive rends,
While fast and far the fiery shower descends;
And down the mountain-verge
The crimson cataract's surge
Rolls with impetuous force and thundering sound,
Hurls in ascending steam
The dissipated stream,
And sinks the woods in whitening ashes round;
Till, mid the homes of men, the billows red
Involve the dying and the dead,
In general havoc sweeping from the soil
Vineyards, and fanes, and towers, the pride of earthly toil.
EPODE II.
Mark yon city's ancient glory,Through revolving ages reared;
Long the theme of deathless story,
Long by distant lands revered.
In vain around her bulwarks lower
The legions of the adverse power,
Till at my shrine the suppliant hymn they raise.
Then comes the triumph of my conquering hour:
Her portals tremble, and her temples blaze:
Her long dominion of unnumbered years
One dreadful day to endless ruin dooms.
In after times the pensive wanderer hears
The shrill breeze whistle o'er unhonored tombs,
Where mid her prostrate walls the purple heath-flower blooms.
STROPHE III.
Yet wisdom in my wasting courseMay still the trace of bounty find.
Even in my most destructive force,
I ever loved and blessed mankind.
Yon harbinger of fate, that flies
Portentous through the midnight skies,
Bears life and splendor to the orb of heaven,
From whose pure fount to man are given
What though, when impious nations scorn my sway,
From cliff to cliff I raise
The beacon's dreadful blaze,
And through their conflagrated dwellings rave;
Yet from my parent urn
The springs of glory burn,
That guide the wise, and animate the brave.
Thence glows the vestal-torch, whose power refined
Awakes, expands, illumes the mind:
Thence the soft rays, through pity's tears that stream;
And friendship's guardian light, and love's ethereal beam.
ANTISTROPHE III.
Though in the dread volcanic tideThe floods of devastation roll,
Yet thence to mortals are supplied
New gifts of my benign control.
While with incumbent ocean's rage
Fierce strife my fountain-torrents wage,
Rocks piled on rocks amid the conflict rise.
The wondering mariner descries
Their fire-scorched summits frowning o'er the wave,
And hears with awe the unwonted breakers rave.
My plastic influence dwells,
Till rivers burst, and forests clothe the isle;
And, where the stormy breeze
Late howled o'er shoreless seas,
Man rears his home, and friendly harbours smile.
My bounty dies, when man my fane forsakes.
Alone my brooding vengeance wakes.
Deep in my subterranean domes enfurled,
I gather up my force to overwhelm the world.
EPODE III.
Tremble, sons of future ages!Tremble at the emblemed doom,
When the red volcano rages,
When the meteor fires the gloom,
When the thunder-brand of heaven
On the mountain-tower is driven.
In these let earth my sleepless might behold:
In these the signals of my wrath be given.
In final hour shall my vast waves be rolled
Round this revolving planetary frame;
And, while terrestrial nature shrinks and dies,
The mighty torrent of eternal flame,
In one wide ruin sounding through the skies,
Shall bid o'er all the world my lonely altar rise.
| The Works of Thomas Love Peacock | |